Cannes has announced the six first and second-time filmmakers selected for its annual Résidence programme, whose 48th session kicked off on October 1 in Paris and will run through February 15, 2025.
This year’s crop of rising talents includes four female filmmakers, among them: French-Moroccan director Sofia Alaoui, a 2022 Screen Arab Star of Tomorrow and 2023 Unifrance 10 to Watch talent, whose debut feature Animalia won the 2023 Sundance special jury prize; Lithuanian director Eglé Razumaite whose latest short Ootidé
competed at Cannes 2024; India’s director Diwa Shah, whose Bahadur: The Brave screened at San Sebastián; and Germany’s Anastasia Veber whose short Trap won a Berlin Golden Bear in 2022.
Rounding out the selected directors are Australian Berlin-based director Rudolf Fitzgerald-Leonard and Colombian director Theo Montoya whose first feature Anhell69 premiered at Venice Critics Week.
All the selected directors will attend the 78th Cannes Film Festival running May 13-24, 2025.
Launched in 2000, the Residence programme holds two sessions per year and has hosted more than 250 filmmakers from 60 countries.
Previous participants include Camera d’Or winning directors Lukas Dhont (Girl) and Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East Of Bucharest), Cannes, Oscar and Golden Globe-winning Son Of Saul director Laszlo Nemes, Oscar-winning filmmaker Nadine Labaki, and Brazilian filmmaker Karim Ainouz, one of the programme’s first residents, who won the Un Certain Regard prize in 2019 with Invisible Life.
Indian director Payal Kapadia developed All We Imagine As Light at La Résidence in 2019 and the drama went on to win the grand prix earlier this year. Kapadia said in a statement from the festival, “The script for All We Imagine As Light was still very fragile when I applied to La Résidence. Having the time and resources to write it in the company of other wonderful screenwriters and directors offered me the ideal environment in which to work.”
Kapadia added: “I also had the opportunity to collaborate closely with my French producers, which is always complicated with co-productions as we live far away. Coming from India, a country where there’s a real lack of distribution for independent films, being in Paris was also a real pleasure as a cinephile! If only I could relive those moments!”
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